GSM Alphabet

Standard SMS can contain 160 characters. However, the characters typed must be part of the so-called 7-bit default alphabet as specified by GSM 3.38. You can see in the table below that this alphabet contains all ASCII characters and some accented characters.

For example, u umlaut (ü) and e with grave (è), are in this set. Please study the table below to have a complete overview. Using any character not in this set, will make the SMS a Unicode SMS and limit the length of the SMS to 70 characters.

Note: a few characters actually count as two characters. These characters are:

{}[]~|\ and the Euro symbol: €

You can also see that in the table below in the hex column. These characters need to be escaped.

Below is the 7 bit default alphabet as specified by GSM 03.38. The corresponding ISO-8859-1 decimal codes are shown in the rightmost column. Note that the euro sign (€) is also included.